Thanks to all who share their educated analysis and historical tidbits. Very appreciated! I've been learning a lot by reading this forum. Learning that El Niño can help, but it isn’t the make-or-break factor I originally thought for major snowstorms, as the 1996 event showed. I also heard that the Knickerbocker Storm occurred without an El Niño, and look at the impact it had. There are clearly other factors at play, so it really comes down to timing. Large-scale patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and similar climate oscillations also play a role.